The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, set deep inside a mountain to withstand disasters from nuclear war to global warming, was launched in 2008 as a backup for the world’s gene banks that store the genetic code for thousands of plant species.

Protected by permafrost, the vault has received samples from across the world, and played a leading role between 2015 and 2019 in rebuilding seed collections damaged during the war in Syria.

“The seeds deposited this week represent not just biodiversity, but also the knowledge, culture and resilience of the communities that steward them,” Executive Director Stefan Schmitz of the Crop Trust said in a statement.

The new contributions include a sample of 15 species from Sudan, consisting of several varieties of sorghum – a plant that is significant both for the country’s food security and its cultural heritage, the Crop Trust said.

The war between the Rapid Support Forces and the army which broke out in April 2023 has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced 12 million, while plunging half of Sudan into hunger and several locations into famine.

“In Sudan…these seeds represent hope,” the director of Sudan’s Agricultural Plant Genetic Resources Conservation and Research Centre said in a statement.

The total of 14,022 new samples will be deposited at 1430 GMT, including seeds of Nordic tree species from Sweden and rice from Thailand, the Crop Trust said.

— Reporting by Louise Rasmussen and Anna Ringstrom

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Interfax reported that a decree has been signed extending until Dec. 31, 2025, quotas on potato, wheat, rye, barley, corn, soybean, rapeseed, sunflower and sugar beet seeds imported from unfriendly countries.

Up to 18.3 thousand tons of seed can be imported in 2025 from unfriendly countries, a category that includes all European Union members, alongside the United States and other states aligned with Washington.

The original quota on unfriendly countries’ seeds was introduced in February 2024 and expires on Tuesday.

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Cquesta CEO Michael Ott told the Agri Tech Venture Forum in Ontario earlier this spring that half the human impact on carbon released to the atmosphere can be accounted for if nature can be made 2.5 per cent more efficient.

Cquesta works with seed researchers and seed companies to put its process into the roots of commercial crops.

“We’re a root architecture modification company, so I can do whatever you want. I can make it skinny or fat or wider, shallow or narrow, deep or whatever,” says Ott.

The company’s quickest route to market is carbon, and roots are the key to greater sequestration.

He says when carbon is moved deeper into the soil, it stays there longer. This addresses the issue of plowing that can move sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere.

“As you go down in the soil, oxygen levels decrease, microbial activity decreases and when that carbon sticks around for a lot longer, so if you’re able to get a low of 30 centimetres, you can see that 80 per cent of that carbon is more than 50 years old.”

The company has licensed nine patents from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, where researchers have been working on gene editing plants. The company is based in Chicago and is building a “plant transformation facility” in St. Louis.

Its goal is to enhance roots at no cost to farmers. Cquesta and its seed company partners will benefit from helping the environment and by selling carbon credits.

“All farmers love deep roots because they basically help tolerate weather inconsistencies,” says Ott.

The challenge for the company is to reach the scale needed to make a profit.

“When farmers are buying seeds, they are buying seeds with six to 10 traits. We want there to be one more trait labelled deep roots slash carbon sequestration that is given to them for free.”

The other major partners are seed companies to which Cquesta plans to licence its technology. Then it plans to get paid for the carbon its root system sequesters and “paying everyone back through the system.”

The company just completed a $6-million funding round. It sees a lot of potential in the large acreage planted to canola in Canada, and that’s why Ott was at the Canadian venture forum event.

The first product the company will bring to market in two to three years is enhanced roots in cover crops. Then it plans soybeans and canola as its first large acreage crops in three to five years. Other crops like corn will follow in five to seven years, Ott says.

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The survey (found at the Government of Canada website) closes May 1 and is part of the seed regulatory modernization (SRM) process launched in September 2020 by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which administers the Seeds Act and its regulations.

Essentially, Canada’s pedigreed seed system, which evolved over the last 119 years, is under the microscope.

Canada’s seed sector — seed companies, seed growers, farmers, plant breeders, and commodity and value chain associations — is participating. But exactly what changes may come from this process, described as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to revise the rules, is not yet clear and there are some clear fault lines within industry itself that may play into the seed sector’s various stances.

Acrimony

Like with most Canadian agricultural policy discussions, there’s an undercurrent of tension over differing commercial and ideological views.

One major fault line involves the two major seed sector players: the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association (CSGA) and Seeds Canada. It’s not just their differing positions, but also the lingering acrimony following the 2020 vote in which CSGA members forewent merging with other seed trade groups, including the Canadian Seed Trade Association (which represents seed companies), to form Seeds Canada.

The plan was to put Canada’s seed industry, including CSGA, under one roof with one voice.

Even though the CSGA and Canadian Seed Trade Association had long co-operated and even shared some members, there was unease about merging from some growers.

The vote, which was rejected by 55 per cent of CSGA’s members and required two-thirds support to pass, was preceded by 18 months of negotiations and five years of ‘Seed Synergy,’ an industry-wide effort to develop consensus for an improved seed system.

The Canadian Seed Trade Association and the other three organizations voted to merge. In 2021, they formed Seeds Canada without the CSGA.

Seed certification

Through its authority under federal seed regulations, the CSGA says it is one of the world’s biggest crop certification administrators. It annually certifies more than 1.2 million acres of seed from more than 60 different crop types.

There are five categories of seed with Canadian pedigreed status: breeder, select, foundation, registered and certified — the latter being what farmers buy to plant if they aren’t sowing saved or common seed. CSGA certifies breeder and select seed.

The CSGA, with input from the entire seed sector through its crop-specific working groups, sets the standards for pedigreed seed and crop production.

After passing inspection by a CFIA-authorized inspector, CSGA also certifies standing seed crops in the foundation, registered and certified categories. After harvest, that seed is sampled, tested and graded by authorized samplers, analysts and graders, all overseen by the CFIA. If the seed meets quality standards, it gets a CFIA tag (coloured blue in the case of certified seed).

CSGA wants to expand its current role to be the “main administrator through a digital single window managing all seed certification function on behalf of the government,” it states on its website.

Michael Scheffel, CSGA’s managing director of policy and standards, says it makes sense, given CSGA’s more than 100 years of experience in pedigreed seed crop standards-setting and seed certification.

However, CSGA also wants its work to continue to be overseen and regulated by the CFIA.

CSGA wants “a sector-led, government-enabled” pedigreed seed system, Scheffel said in an recent interview.

CSGA is also touting its ‘SeedCert’ digital platform for collecting more information regarding seed declarations, seed grading reports and quantity of certified seed.

CSGA has used the system for more than 10 years, providing a digital end-to-end seed crop certification framework.

Expanding SeedCert to provide a digital single window for all seed certification services would expedite data access, provide value-added traceability opportunities for the seed sector and its customers and improve monitoring and regulatory oversight of the sector, CSGA says.

Due diligence

Seeds Canada was still consulting its members on recommendations to the CFIA as of press time.

Recommendations could be out by the second week of April, Lauren Comin, Seeds Canada’s director of policy, said March 25.

The agency’s survey questions don’t leave a lot of room for nuance, she said. “What’s good for the cereals and what’s good for canola is not always good for forage and turf and for a garden seed,” Comin said.

Initially, Seeds Canada proposed opening up CSGA’s role in crop certification to competition but, when asked if that’s the current policy, Comin was circumspect.

Since Seeds Canada doesn’t have access to CFIA’s internal process for assessing alternative service providers, Seeds Canada doesn’t know if expanding CSGA’s role would be good for the sector or not. “So while we’re not saying ‘absolutely not,’ that CSGA can’t take on anything more, we’re saying we need to do our due diligence here and we need to make sure that anything that we are contracting out through an alternative service delivery arrangement is done with the best interest of the entire seed sector in mind,” Comin said.

However, she added that “competition is always a good thing,” because “it tends to keep costs low and people responsible.”

Seeds Canada is also skeptical of expanding CSGA’s digital SeedCert program.

“We can’t have costs go through the roof and provide additional bells and whistles throughout the certified seed system (that) the farmer doesn’t actually need and that they don’t want to pay for,” Comin said.

In particular, she noted that data collection is an area that deserves further scrutiny. There’s a lot of data that could be collected, but does it make sense to collect it? “We are opposed to collecting extra data and going through extra steps that are of no value to the farmer and that are only going to add cost to the system.”

CSGA is proposing a cost-effective seed certification system, Scheffel said via email. He noted that during the Seed Synergy process, all seed sector partners endorsed the single-window concept and there was a projected cost and time savings of between $1.5-$2.5 million annually.

“Our commitment to this digital single window remains,” he said.

Advisory committee

Seeds Canada and the CSGA agree that to continually improve seed regulations, an advisory committee to the CFIA made up of members representing the seed sector should be created.

Seeds Canada wants to model it after the Plant Breeders’ Rights advisory committee to the CFIA, with formal governing powers, fiduciary responsibilities and the ability to set pedigreed seed standards.

CSGA, which currently sets seed standards through its crop-specific working crops (which represent the entire seed sector) wants to keep doing it. “CSGA and its standard-setting process is a 100-year-old example of how effective delegation of (government) authority and incorporation by reference can be,” it says.

CSGA wants a multi-stakeholder advisory committee with no governing power, no standard-setting authority, no fiduciary responsibility and no organization budget or personnel.

“The key word is advisory,” Scheffel said. “The SRM process has been successful because lobby organizations have not been able to take control and seize power. An advisory committee should… advise government.”

Seeds Canada wants seed standards set by an “independent body” rather than CSGA, Comin said.

“We really do need to have something that’s independent that everyone can sort of see themselves and see their operations in,” she said.

Cancelling varieties

Should registrants be able to cancel varieties at their own request when there are no safety concerns with the variety? Seeds Canada says yes. CSGA says no.

“I think we need to let some varieties go,” Comin said. “Every year we’re getting better varieties and everyone’s goal across the agriculture community should be for farmers to adopt the latest and greatest varieties.”

She said that policy would benefit farmers agronomically and strengthen markets for Canadian grain through reputational enhancement, increased environmental gains and will help with climate change adaptation.

Cancelling varieties gives farmers less choice and it directly affects farmers’ use of common seed, because it’s illegal to sell seed from an unregistered variety, Scheffel said. It is also unlikely the CFIA has the resources to police it, he said.

“Producer and commodity groups have let us know through the SRM process that they want choice,” he said. “Being able to cancel a variety because it is not of interest to the company anymore is not giving choice to farmers.”

According to Comin, it’s unlikely a seed company would cancel a variety if it were still popular with farmers. “That variety is their intellectual property and they should be able to decide if they want it on the market or not,” she said.

Farmers would have more say in preventing publicly owned varieties from being cancelled, Comin added.

Common seed

Canadian farmers can save seed from crops they harvest to plant in the future, so long as they haven’t signed a contract with the seed seller prohibiting it. Common seed, unlike certified seed, is produced without any officially recognized third-party inspections to confirm varietal purity, identity or quality.

Farmers are allowed to sell common seed to other farmers unimpeded, as long as they don’t advertise it for sale or give it a grade name. Should the buyer ask for a seed test report, the seller must provide one. If they advertise, it must be tested and labelled when sold with a grade name.

CFIA is asking the industry if only accredited graders should be allowed to assign a grade to common seed moving forward. Scheffel said that a farmer selling seed could hire an accredited grader or become one, but the change would impede selling common seed.

“We’re advocating that farmer-to-farmer sales can still happen without a grade name,” he said. “We’re also suggesting that, instead of putting a grade name on that common seed and therefore having to become an accredited grader, a commercial common seed seller could instead provide their customer with a seed test report for that seed.”

While CSGA firmly supports plant breeders’ rights, it believes that once those rights have expired, farmers should have royalty-free access, Scheffel said.

“Cancelling a (variety) registration sort of turns CFIA into a cop for the plant breeders in that situation,” he said.

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The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in a notice dated Dec. 25 issued licenses to 26 local companies to produce, distribute and sell the GMO seeds in certain provinces.

The companies named include Beijing Dabeinong Technology 002385.SZ, subsidiaries of Yuan Long Ping High-Tech Agriculture 000998.SZ, and China National Seed, now owned by Syngenta Group.

Other licensed companies include those operating in the major grain-producing provinces of Hebei, Liaoning, Jilin and Inner Mongolia.

This is China’s first batch of companies to receive seed production and operation licences for GMO corn and soybeans, the GLOCON Agritech Co-Innovation Institute said in a note.

Though cautious about GMO technology, Beijing has been slowly moving to open up the market. It has approved more than a dozen genetic changes since 2019.

The world’s biggest buyer of soybeans and corn wants to reduce its reliance on imports amounting to more than 100 million metric tons a year to feed its livestock.

Commercial planting of GMO varieties will boost yields and could significantly lower future purchases from the United States and Brazil.

The share prices of Dabeinong and Yuan Long Ping opened 3 per cent and 2 per cent higher respectively at the opening bell on Wednesday in their first trading since the announcement, then gave up some of the gains.

Three industry sources told Reuters this month that Chinese corn breeders are preparing for the planting of about 670,000 hectares of GMO corn in eight provinces next year, more than double the amount planted in 2023.

But Beijing is still expected to tightly control the rollout of GMOs.

Large-scale trials of GMO soy and corn were carried out this year, which the agriculture ministry said showed “outstanding” results and that the technology was safe and essential.

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On Monday, the agency released a “What We Heard” report summarizing the responses of 315 individuals and groups who participated in an online survey from Feb. 15 to May 1.

The CFIA is looking to update seed regulations to “reduce complexity, protect producers and consumers by strengthening existing rules and adapt to future technical advances and innovation.”

The online consultation is part of the process to alter the seeds regulations.

The CFIA was looking for feedback on variety registration, sampling testing and grading of seed, harvesting, cleaning seed and conditioning and seed crop certification.

In its report, the CFIA said a large share of the 315 respondents, including seed growers, farmers, commodity groups and plant breeders, supported the following recommendations:

• Setting up a national variety registration system.
• Developing a regulatory pathway for heritage and heirloom varieties.
• Forming regional recommending committees with the authority to recommend placing a regional restriction on a variety registration in their specific region.
• Continuing one national body establishing and determining the seed crop varietal purity standards to issue a seed crop certificate.
• Making the purity standards for No. 1 and No. 2 grades the same.

“Variety registration creates a high level of trust as the quality of traits is consistent in the seed and crops grown in Canada,” the CFIA said, summarizing the comments on the national variety registration system.

“That equips farmers to make decisions about what they grow while maintaining end-user confidence for products to be in a competitive market.”

READ MORE: Seeding the future

There was mixed support for other ideas to modernize the seeds regulations.

For instance, respondents aren’t sure it’s a good idea for someone other than the CFIA to deliver training to licensed seed crop inspectors.

The CFIA will consider the input from the online survey when it eventually modernizes the seeds regulations.

However, the agency “anticipates” more consultations on seed regulatory modernization this winter.

— Robert Arnason reports for the Winnipeg bureau of the Western Producer.

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This year’s edition of the seed fair is the 126th, making it one of the oldest such fairs in Western Canada.

“It’s the oldest ribboning show in Canada so it’s got quite an array of different seeds,” said show manager Dave Fiddler. “It encompasses all ages and all types of seed from the pedigreed seed growers of Western Canada.”

There are more than two dozen classes, with cereals, pulse crops, forage seed and forage being the main ones. There are also two classes in the seed cleaning plant competition (one for quality of seed cleaning and one for seed treatment) and a ‘display’ category for crops not included in the other 25 classes, such as ancient grains.

There are two main categories, one for pedigree seed growers and one for juniors. Entrants in the latter must be ages 9 to 18, and must prepare the samples themselves.

The pedigree classes require extensive documentation, including crop certificate number, lot number, grade, germination and the lab where the test was done. The two-kilogram samples must come from a lot of at least three tonnes (110 bushels).

A panel of five judges set aside one day to examine each entry. They assess each batch of seed for colour, soundness and plumpness and look for weed seeds and indicators of disease. The panel consists of farmers and other industry professionals.

Entries must come from the farm of those submitting them, but they can be grown anywhere in North America. As of late January, there were 150 entries but Fiddler was expecting many more before the Feb. 3 deadline. The number of youth entries has been particularly strong this year, he said.

“It’ll be right full. We expect really good entries.”

All entries can be found on the seed floor of the south pavilion of the Lethbridge and District Exhibition Park from Feb. 28 to March 2.

First-place winners will be announced at an awards reception March 2 at 2 p.m. in Heritage Hall.

“It’s a stand-up reception and the public is welcome to attend,” said Fiddler.

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CFIA officials, however, reject the NFU’s allegation that the metadata attached to the proposal document in question may suggest plant science industry lobbyists are “effectively directing” the CFIA.

The NFU, in an Oct. 17 release, cited a report last month by Radio Canada examining a embargoed Microsoft Word document it obtained on the topic of environmental release of seed.

Under “author,” the document’s metadata names Jennifer Hubert, the same name as the executive director for plant biotechnology at plant science trade organization CropLife Canada.

The NFU on Oct. 17 called the Radio Canada report “alarming evidence of inappropriate collaboration between our public regulator and the private corporations whose products it regulates, to the point that it appears CropLife is effectively directing the CFIA.”

MORE TO READ: Seeding the future

The NFU said the document “puts forward a system that would benefit the multinational seed corporations by allowing them to release many new gene-edited seed varieties without independent government safety assessments or other government oversight, and without disclosing they are gene-edited to government or the public.”

NFU president Katie Ward, in the same release, said the regulatory guidance as proposed would “weaken public trust in our food regulatory system by preventing independent scientific evaluation by government regulators before these products are sold.”

In the NFU’s letter to Ag Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, Ward said the biotechnology companies represented by CropLife and like-minded groups “will be the main beneficiaries of regulatory guidance that excludes gene-edited plants from government safety assessments and public disclosure.”

In the guidance, “neither the concerns of farmers, nor the broader public interest have been properly addressed,” Ward wrote in the letter.

NFU’s former president Terry Boehm, in its Oct. 17 release, said CFIA is “formally committed to maintain regulatory independence from all external stakeholders” — thus the agency’s head Dr. Siddika Mithani should be replaced with “a new president who we can count on to put this value into practice at all times.”

‘Never’

Responding Thursday via email, CFIA representatives called out “inaccuracies” in the NFU’s release, emphasizing the CFIA remains “an independent, scientific and evidence-based federal regulatory agency committed to ethical transparency and accountability” and “always authors its own independent guidance and policies.”

The document, CFIA said, was developed in the wake of four months’ consultations in 2021 with the public, plant breeders, ag industry and not-for-profits.

Later consultations, CFIA said, were held with “seed and grain industry associations” including CropLife as well as plant breeders, researchers, organic industry associations and “non-government organizations” — including the NFU, Canadian Biotechnology Action Network and Vigilance OGM, all of which signed onto the NFU’s letter to Bibeau.

“After considering and then incorporating some of the stakeholder feedback on the draft guidance, the CFIA updated all its working documents within one of the returned copies,” the agency said, and the revised document then went out to stakeholders for further comment.

“For this reason, the metadata erroneously identifies the ‘author’ of this document as someone other than a CFIA employee,” CFIA said, but “in fact, the entire draft guidance document, including the proposed key directions, was written by the CFIA, incorporating some of the feedback from multiple stakeholders.”

External parties, including industry associations, “are never the authors of CFIA documents,” the agency said.

CropLife’s Hubert, for her part, is quoted in the Radio Canada report as saying she is not the author of the document but did provide “suggestions and recommendations.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Researchers said on Thursday they planted seeds of a diminutive flowering weed called Arabidopsis thaliana in 12 small thimble-sized containers each bearing a gram of moon soil, more properly called lunar regolith, and watched as they sprouted and grew. Lunar regolith, with its sharp particles and lack of organic material, differs greatly from Earth soil, so it was unknown whether seeds would germinate.

“When we first saw that abundance of green sprouts cast over all of the samples, it took our breath away,” said horticultural sciences professor Anna-Lisa Paul, director of the University of Florida Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research and co-leader of the study published in the journal Communications Biology.

“Plants can grow in lunar regolith. That one simple statement is huge and opens the door to future exploration using resources in place on the moon and likely Mars,” Paul said.

Every seed germinated and there were no outward differences at the early stages of growth between those sown in the regolith — composed mostly of crushed basalt rocks — and seeds sown for comparative reasons in volcanic ash from Earth with similar mineral composition and particle size.

The regolith seeds, perhaps unsurprisingly, did less well than the comparison plants. They were slower to grow and generally littler, had more stunted roots and were more apt to exhibit stress-related traits such as smaller leaves and deep reddish black colouration not typical of healthy growth. They also showed gene activity indicative of stress, similar to plant reactions to salt, metal and oxidation.

“Even though plants could grow in the regolith, they had to work hard metabolically to do so,” Paul said.

To the researchers, the fact that they grew at all was remarkable. Study co-leader Rob Ferl, a University of Florida assistant vice-president for research, said he felt “joy at watching life do something that had never been done before.”

“Seeing plants grow is an achievement in that it says that we can go to the moon and grow our food, clean our air and recycle our water using plants the way we use them here on Earth. It is also a revelation in that it says that terrestrial life is not limited to Earth,” Ferl added.

Arabidopsis, also called thale cress, is widely used in scientific research, including previous experiments in orbit, owing to its speedy life cycle and a deep understanding of its genetics.

NASA made available 12 grams — just a few teaspoons — of regolith collected during the Apollo 11, Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 missions. The researchers planted three or four seeds in a dozen containers moistened with a nutrient solution, then placed them in a laboratory at about 73 F (23 C) under LED lights giving off a pink hue.

The seeds sprouted within three days. After about a week of growth, the researchers removed all but one plant from each container. The one was left to grow until it was 20 days old, with its leaves then harvested to assess gene activity.

The researchers also determined that regolith that had experienced longer exposure to cosmic rays and solar wind on the lunar surface was less hospitable to growth.

Earth plants could help people establish outposts in places like the moon and Mars, as depicted in the 2015 film The Martian when an astronaut grew potatoes on the Red Planet. NASA’s Artemis program envisions people returning to the moon’s surface in the coming years.

“Plants are deeply embedded in the science of space exploration because of their life-support role, especially when we consider leaving the Earth for extended periods of time,” Ferl said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Will Dunham.

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The CGC on Monday laid out a list of changes to its grain grading policies and standards for wheat, canola, peas, beans and mustard to take effect for the 2022-23 crop year — all starting Aug. 1 except where noted below.

For Canada Western Red Spring (CWRS) and Canada Western Red Winter (CWRW) wheats, new mildew standard samples take effect for the No. 1 and No. 2 grades effective Aug. 1, and for No. 1 and 2 Canada Eastern Red Spring (CERS) effective July 1.

For No. 3 CWRS, CWRW and CERS wheats, however, the previous mildew standards will no longer be used, as mildew “will no longer be a grading factor” starting in 2022-23.

For other grades of grain grown in Western and Easterm Canada, the uses of the last designated standard and print samples are recommended for designation for the 2022-23 crop year, the CGC said.

For No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 Canada canola, effective Aug. 1, tolerance for inconspicuous admixture will be cut from five per cent to one per cent.

“Inconspicuous admixture” in canola refers to seeds such as common wild mustard, domestic oriental and brown mustards and brown carinata — none of which are “readily distinguishable” from canola.

The CGC uses microscopes when analyzing canola samples to measure that percentage of admixture by weight.

For No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 Canada domestic mustard, meanwhile, the CGC is changing its tolerance for excreta — that is, excrement from any animal, including mammals, birds or insects — to 0.01 per cent, rather than the current measure of one “kernel-size piece” per 500 grams. That change also takes effect Aug. 1.

For No. 2 Canada green peas, the CGC will raise its tolerance on splits to three per cent, up from one per cent, effective Aug. 1.

Highest-grade beans

The CGC is also changing up the grading eligibility for beans: starting Aug. 1, only Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)-registered varieties of coloured beans will be eligible for the “highest statutory grades” for beans in Canada.

“Coloured beans” for the purpose of this rule include but aren’t limited to black beans, cranberry beans, pinto beans, red kidney beans, red Mexican beans and yellow eye beans.

CFIA in previous years had granted temporary exemptions from variety registration requirements and the CGC had allowed non-registered bean varieties to be eligible for the highest grade. The two agencies had those exemptions in place until now so farmers “could take advantage of new varieties of coloured field beans that were not yet registered.”

On an unrelated grading policy change for Extra No. 1 Canada beans, the commission will also redefine “good natural colour” effective Aug. 1 to state that eligible beans “may be slightly dull, slightly immature or have very lightly adhered soil.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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